The grammar schools of medieval England : A.F. Leach in historiographical perspective / John N. Miner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Miner, John N. (John Nelson), 1920-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Leach, Arthur Francis, 1851-1915.

Leach, Arthur Francis.

Education, Medieval--England--Historiography.

Education, Medieval.

Endowed public schools (Great Britain)--Historiography.

Endowed public schools (Great Britain).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 355 pages, 9 pages of plates) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Montreal & Kingston ; Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Leach struggled to rid his countrymen of the persistent myth that the monks had been the schoolmasters of the pre-Reformation period in England. To accomplish his goal he embarked on a program of research and publication, based on a mass of hitherto unexplored documents, to establish the great antiquity of many of the nation's Latin schools and to show that they derived from clerical, but secular, colleges of Anglo-Saxon times. Showing this would, he hoped, eliminate the persistant belief that monks had been the school-masters of pre-Reformation England. Miner argues that previous readings of Leach, which suggest that his main concern is to take issue with the Reformation and argue that this great watershed in history was - at least with regard to education - a retrograde step rather than a great movement forward, have not taken into account the full range of his publications. The aim of the present study is thus to place both Leach's achievements and his more controversial theses in historical context. A separate chapter devoted to unpublished material from the Charity Commission reveals Leach's method of work and provides an analytic survey of opinions on his work by reviewers and historians. The author supplements Leach's lack of material on the school curriculum through descriptive analysis of grammatical manuscripts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, showing the presence of an educational Christendom of which Leach was clearly unaware.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Abbreviations

Preface

Illustrations

The Contribution of A.F. Leach

Introductory Survey

Background to the Endowed Schools Act of 1869

Leach as Assistant Charity Commissioner

Analysis of "English Schools at the Reformation, 1546—48" and "The Schools of Medieval England"

The Secular Origins of England's Schools

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Leach's Research

The Grammar Program

Educational Institutions

Leach in Historicgraphical Context: Contemporary Criticism and Recent Scholarship

Conclusion

Appendices

Charity Commission Report (in manuscript) on Chichester, 27 July 1886, by A.F. Leach

Latin Grammar

Dictamen

Speculative Grammar

William Chartham’s Speculum Parvulorum

Educational Documents

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [295]-348) and index.

ISBN:

0-7735-6152-8

OCLC:

929120936